This paper presents an overview of the large international projects in which the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan is involved, namely, the Subaru Telescope, Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, and the Thirty Meter Telescope. The last section provides a brief historical view of the international collaboration in East Asia regions over the last 20 years.

We report our measurements of the trigonometric distance and proper motion of IRAS 20056+3350, obtained from the annual parallax of H2O masers. Our distance of D = 4:69+0:65 -0:51 kpc, which is 2.8 times larger than the near kinematic distance adopted in the literature, places IRAS 20056+3350 at the leading tip of the Local arm and proximal to the Solar circle. We estimated the proper motion of IRAS 20056+3350 to be (μα cos δ, μδ) = (—2:62 ± 0:33, —5:65 ± 0:52) mas yr-1 from the group motion of H2O masers, and use our results to estimate the angular velocity of Galactic rotation at the Galactocentric distance of the Sun, Ω0 = 29:75 ± 2:29 km s-1 kpc-1, which is consistent with the values obtained for other tangent points and Solar circle objects.

We present [Fe ii] ⋋ 1.257 μm spectra toward the interacting binary UY Aur with 0:0014 angular resolution, obtained with the Near infrared Integral Field Spectrograph (NIFS) combined with the adaptive optics system Altair of the GEMINI observatory. In the [Fe ii] emission, UY Aur A (primary) is brighter than UY Aur B (secondary). The blueshifted and redshifted emission between the primary and secondary show a complicated structure. The radial velocities of the [Fe ii] emission features are similar for UY Aur A and B: ~ —100 km s-1 and ~ +130 km s-1 for the blueshifted and redshifted components, respectively. Considering the morphologies of the [Fe ii] emissions and bipolar out ow context, we concluded that UY Aur A drives fast and widely opening out ows with an opening angle of ~90° while UY Aur B has micro collimated jets.

The latest scientific highlights obtained with the Subaru telescope are given together with its current status and on-going instrumentation. We have been successfully operating the telescope and 8 observatory instruments (including an adaptive optics system) since January 1999, when the first light was accomplished. Open-use of Subaru began in December 2000. Subaru has a unique capability of its prime focus among other 8-10 meter class telescopes and has an excellent imaging performance as a result of its sophisticated active optics combined with the high stability of the sky at Mauna Kea. Scientific highlights are given on the discoveries of the most distant galaxies, spiral structure on a protoplanetary disk around AB Aur, and planetesimal belts in the debris disk around β Pic. Brief summaries are given for three new instruments: the Multi-Object Infrared Camera and Spectrograph (MOIRCS), 188 element adaptive optics system, and Fiber Multi-Object Spectrograph (FMOS)